This Night
by Howlingmojo
Summary: In her anger, she broke him. Through her forgiveness, she will rebuild him.
1. Chapter 1

**This Night**

**Chapter I**

**Blackest of Night**

F_or Aebtissin. Woman extraordinaire._

They fought. A lot. It really was inescapable. With her being who, or rather, what she was and him the bitter, dried up _bigot_, they couldn't help but end each halfway decent conversation they tried to have in a shouting match. The worst fights occurred when he had the sheer nerve to try and _justify_ his actions towards her people. He tried to explain to her, in a kindly condescending way that the people she considered her brethren, were no more to him than the lowest form of street rats, begging to be swept of the streets of Paris like the garbage he projected them to be. She saw the corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes light up with an unholy fire as he slipped into a familiar sermon, the words _vermin, hell_ and _damnation_ rolling off his tongue like the names of old familiar friends. The resounding slap of her hand on his gaunt cheek was her parting shot on that occasion. She had hurried back to the sanctuary of her chambers, palm of her hand smarting and tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, wondering why it had to be _her _stuck in this impossible position of living with the biggest monster France had seen in ages. A villain who didn't even have the common sense to consider himself a villain. Utterly remorseless he appeared, for the many lives he had taken in the name of God, the King and France. One by one, gypsies and other unfortunates whose only fault it was that they were born with a different colour of skin. _How did he sleep at night?_

And yet.

She knew something about him, a little sneaky truth that set her teeth on edge and made her treacherous heart flutter wildly each time she thought about it.

Claude Frollo, Monster Extraordinaire, _He-Who-Considered-Gypsies-Hellspawn_, was in love with her. _Loved_ her. Loved _her. Claude Frollo loved Esmeralda, Queen of the Gypsies._ What a great cosmic fucking _joke._ And the worst thing about it was this: _He didn't even know it_. For a man who ruled a city like Paris meticulously and with an iron fist, Frollo was remarkably stupid about matters of the heart. Oh she saw it, in the way his heavy lidded gaze rested on her just a little too long when they met for their convivial _sparring sessions. _The way his pulse raced as she placed her hand on the crook of his elbow, to be escorted by him through countless colourless halls in the bowels of the Palace of Justice. She felt it in the way he leant unconsciously into her, his body warmth slowly seeping into her clothes, as they sat side by side in his cramped coach. And she pretended not to be affected by the smell of him. The smell of wet earth on a hot summer afternoon, after a thunderstorm. Such a _wild _scent, it seemed almost out of place on a repressed man like him.

There it was though, staring her in the face, clear as day. The crux of the matter. The great paradox of this man. Claude Frollo loved the thing he claimed to hate.

Esmeralda decided it was high time somebody confronted Frollo with a mirror.

Dinner in the drawing room. Despite the sweltering heat of summer, soup for starters. Frollo frowned at his companion, who seemed distracted today. She projected a sense of dejection. Almost as if the fight had gone out of her_. Pity_.

He toyed with his soup for a moment, before dropping the spoon with a clang back in his bowl. Esmeralda's head came up at the sudden sound, one eyebrow raised in silent query. Frollo's furrow turned into a scowl as he examined her mulish expression. What the devil was going on inside that head now? A sense of foreboding crept up on him and he fought the urge to squirm.

_Silence before the storm_.

He dabbed the side of his mouth with his napkin, before placing it next to his bowl again, in an exact angle. Because he was fastidious like that. In every aspect. He hated messy eaters. His father always said that men who didn't know their table manners dined with demons and pigs. To underline this, he had, when Claude was just a young boy, punished him once for speaking with his mouth full by dragging the struggling, scared boy down to the stables and nearly choking him in the pig's trough. Father had held his head in the pig's feed, forcing him to chew and swallow the stuff, and when the boy had choked on his own vomit, he had yanked the boy's head up by the scruff of his neck and down again into the trough, great clumps of fine black hair in his large, angry hands. It had taken Claude months to grow back the missing hair, and to this day, he preferred the hair on his neck as short as possible.

"There's something that's been bothering me, Frollo," her voice cut through his musings, and he shook himself, annoyed at being caught daydreaming. He needed his wits about him enough as it was around her, without being blindsided by maudlin thoughts.

"Well? Pray tell, enlighten me," he replied, annoyed at the catch in his own voice. He had meant to sound suave, not like a gravelly old beggar, _dammit_.

Esmeralda stood up from her seat then, and before courtesy could make him rise out of his seat as well, she was at his side She pushed gently down on his shoulder, and he sank down again, bewildered at her sudden ease in touching him. But all the while silently relishing it.

She scooted closer, finally perching herself on the edge of the table, conveniently placing herself higher than him. The edge of her skirts flowed past and over his knees, her booted foot resting on the edge of his armrest.

Slowly her fingers slid down his shoulder, down his chest, to slowly tap against the place where she suspected his heart ( if he _had_ one) to be.

"I am going to ask you a question." She stated simply. "And I want you to be honest with me."

Frollo swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. A slight tremor started in his left hand, and he clenched his fingers hard around his armrest in a bid to conceal his body's reaction to her. Still, he noticed her green eyes flicker briefly to his hand and then slide knowingly back up to his eyes again. Caught. _Damnation._

"_What?" _He croaked, secretly disgusted with himself.

"How do you feel about me, Frollo?"

There.

His eyes widened at her question and he swallowed again. He reached for his goblet, eager to moisten his dry throat, but Esmeralda beat him to it, sliding the goblet just out of his reach. "Answer me first."

"I..I," he stammered stupidly.

"Because it seems to me," she continued blithely, " that it would be a strange thing for a man of your...stature to fall in love with a, what is it that you called my people the other day? Ah yes. A sub-human." Esmeralda made a disparaging noise in her throat. " A _sub-human_." She repeated. "Not really human. Apes. Monkeys." She leaned in closer and her hair swayed forward as well, tendrils of black curling and caressing his sweaty, thin face, giving him another whiff of that alluring scent that was uniquely her. "Does your kind have a word for a man who falls in love with a _monkey_?" She hissed in his face, her angry hot breath taking away his. " Tell me, mighty minister Frollo, do you wake at night, painfully aroused and confused? Do you touch yourself in the darkness? " Her hands came up to claw at the sides of his head, fingernails digging in the sensitive skin behind his ears. "Do you moan my name when you come, Claude?" She shook his head slightly and his eyes slipped shut, afraid of the righteous fire in her green eyes. How did she hone in on his feelings like that, exposing those things he would not, could not examine further?

He was also disgusted to note that he was painfully _hard_.

"How do you justify yourself, Minister?" She went on, fingers groping his sensitive hair, making him shiver despite the heat. " Lusting after one monkey, (here he tried to interrupt her: "It's not lu-," but she just shook him harder, making his teeth click together painfully) while you cheerfully _burn_ others?"

"Do you want to know what the other monkeys were called, Judge Frollo?" He tried to shake his head, he didn't want to hear, didn't want to know-, but she forged on, like a wrathful angel.

"The man you quartered in the town square, for stealing and resisting arrest?" A face flashed unbidden before his mind's eye, and he gritted his teeth. " His name was Nuri. He was married, with three children. Your men _laughed_ as his innards spilled over the stones."

"The boy you maimed for pick pocketing? He was _nine_. His name was Simzi Trouillefou." Her fingers trailed lower, to rest on the pulsing point in his exposed neck. "He died, because what was left of his feet became infected. I was there when he was born, and I was there as I comforted his mother, my _cousin_, as we put him back in the earth. Earth that you refused to have blessed, so that his spirit is lost forevermore." Frollo choked at this.

"Why Frollo," she crooned mockingly. "Your pulse is racing!" Her fingers fingered his jaw. They slid further down, almost teasingly, the pad of her index finger resting briefly on his thin bloodless lips.

"Need I go on?" she whispered finally, dropping her hands back in her lap. Frollo shrank back in his seat, ageing visibly before her. Sunken eyes stared up at her. "_Stop," _he whispered. "No more...please!"

That word, so strange coming from his lips, got to her and she looked down on him, this broken shell of a man. His trembling had worsened and he sat, clenching and unclenching his long fingers, clearly in mental agony, silver eyes staring up at her in silent terror.

"I can assure you, there are many more names for you to hear." She replied evenly.

It was always for the greater good, dammitalltohell! He tried rationalizing to himself, waiting for his conscience to agree with him. But the voice, that angry voice that sounded so much like his fathers', the voice that had driven him for so many years was suddenly silent and he was left with the tatters of his mental peace and the dull roar in his ears. He gritted his teeth at the scratchy feeling in his eyes. His vision blurred momentarily and he blinked furiously, willing the sudden moisture in his eyes away.

"I still think you need to hear more."

And she continued. Names of her brethren, her friends, her family spilled from her lips, combined with their apparent crimes and his sentences. Sometimes he would try to reason against her, but she would silence him every time with a soft finger placed on his lips.

Her voice grew hoarse as she continued. Still she carried on, every name a sweet sad poison on her lips as she remembered, mourned and _condemned_. The man before her sat paralyzed, the grooves in his thin face growing deeper as she heaped name upon name on his thin shoulders.

In the end she fell silent. She picked up the goblet beside her and drank deeply, a dark red wine of some luxurious vintage that bloomed on her dry tongue, quenching the dry fire in her throat. Only the best for him, of course.

After a moment of hesitation she held out the wine to him and he took the goblet from her hand, his fingers touching hers briefly. She watched him as he tried to restore a semblance of calm to himself. But still his hand shook badly as he brought the goblet to his lips. For a moment she considered assisting him, but she disregarded that thought as soon as it popped up. He would _hate_ her even more for that. An i_mbecile_, not an invalid.

He drained the cup in one go and let it fall from numb hands, making it clatter loudly on the grey flagstones. Esmeralda watched as it bounced once and then rolled away, coming to rest against the foot of the table.

Sighing to herself, she pushed herself off the edge of the table, skirts once more sliding over his exposed legs. She felt more than saw him shiver and smiled, satisfied that his body, despite his terror, still _sang _to her in response. She bent down to pick up the goblet and straightening slowly to work out the kinks in her back ( and it didn't matter that she gave him a good view of her rump while she did that), got up again. She placed the goblet back on the table, on the exact spot where he had placed it. Because she knew how fastidious he was about things like that.

Then, reaching for a piece of bread carelessly, she snuffed out the candles on the table. Leaving Frollo only illuminated by the faint light of stars and moon. She departed, leaving him only with the dying echo of the door slamming on her way out.

She wouldn't see him for three weeks.


	2. Chapter 2

**This Night**

**Chapter II**

**New Day at Midnight**

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: This chapter owns it birth solely to Black Lab's song "This Night". I strongly suggest listening to it, whilst reading this. Heck, put it on repeat. It is the quintessential Frollo song. <em>

* * *

><p>They came to him, night after night. dressed in red robes. Red, the colour of blood. The colour of anger. The colour of the <em>flames of Hell<em> he could feel licking at his terrified bones. They stood before him, silent as the very graves they were mustered from. Surrounding his bed. Closing in on him. With lifeless eyes they stood and stared at him. Some pointed their bony fingers at him, silently pointing out the man who was responsible for the state of their rotting flesh.

That was usually when the _real_ nightmare would start. He watched, voice lost to him in his terror, as they removed their hoods and one by one, dead and decaying faces of those he had condemned morphed slowly into _her_ face. Shredding his sheets in sheer blind panic he watched as the Esmeralda corpses one by one re-enacted the way he had them tortured, maimed or killed. Mouths opened in agony as flesh was torn from bones, or fire licked at their blackening bodies. All the while their silent, green _dead eyes_ staring at him.

_Again_.

Struggling to awaken and escape his night terrors, Minister Claude Frollo woke up with a blood curdling scream. The sheets threatened to suffocate him, sodden with his sweat, clinging to his naked skin.

_Again_, the stink of his own fear in the hot stifling air of his bedroom. He sat up gingerly, clammy fingers raking through sticky strands of hair. He rubbed his face, fingers gliding over his scratchy whiskers.  
>Finally, admitting defeat, he disentangled himself from his sticky sheets and got up. He made his way over to his windows, back aching in silent protest. Opening the windows as far as they allowed, he let the tepid breeze wash over his naked body. Still it did nothing for him but cool the sweat on his body, making him shiver, despite the muggy heat of night.<p>

This heat would just _not let up._ For weeks now, as Frollo struggled to regain his tattered sanity, the country had been in the grips of what would go down in the history books as the worst drought in centuries. During the daytime, the sun would beat down relentlessly, shriveling crops, evaporating rivers and springs and exposing the brittle, tired bones of the earth beneath. Paris and its surrounding countryside looked like an old man, withering and dying in the sun. Skin stretched taut over protruding bones. The very life sucked out of him.

Frollo had spent the past weeks poring over ancient law books and scrolls of old cases he had presided over and as he read, and learned, his analytical mind and the cold facts that stared him in the face slowly lined up to agree with all that Esmeralda had poured into him that fateful evening. The truth, once uncovered, could not be covered up again. Especially as it sat there, plain as day, staring him in the face in all its inky black and white glory.

He was a fucking _madman_.

And the worst thing was, he had allowed himself to turn into his _father_.

* * *

><p>He had tried regaining some of his mental equilibrium by going to church. Certain that breathing in the peaceful, forgiving air of The Notre Dame would go a long way in calming the turmoil within, he decided to take confession.<p>

Seated in a worn armchair that was older than he was, he poured out his soul and uncertainties to his oldest friend and confessor, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame. The good man had listened with a keen ear, and after offering Frollo some of his finest brandy ( Frollo noticed that his friend's hands had _trembled _as he poured the spirits, and he wondered whether it was because of the terrors of his tale, or that the other man had recognized the moment as a very significant one. The moment of truth. _The Archdeacon feared for Frollo's soul too_.

Still, as the old man had sat down again and had looked at him, he saw the truth in those sad eyes.

Frollo _was _the monster he had once sought out to fight. _It was all true_.

His life was _one big lie._

He turned to his mentor then. Old High Judge Isoard de Chénerilles .The old man was plagued with arthritis and mostly bedridden, but for his erstwhile favourite pupil he had somehow managed to summon the energy to pour over books and look for precedents concerning gypsy prosecution. The results were alarming, to say the least. The whole judicial system in the country was rotten to the core, but the City of Paris was by far the worst.

Most of it was _his fault_.

He couldn't stand the look in his mentor's rheumy eyes then. Disappointment mixed with incredulity mixed with a sad sort of resignation.

But the conclusion was the same. _A very sad one_.

The truth ate at him during the day, gnawing a wide hole in what was left of his sanity. Burying himself in his work didn't help. Riding his horse until the horse nearly collapsed, flanks heaving, didn't help. Drinking until he saw spots dancing before his eyes and he staggered to his bed, didn't _fucking help._ He felt as if he was drowning, while the world looked on merrily.

At night, at the very the moment he closed his eyes in utter exhaustion, he was visited by the spectres in red robes.

And the cycle began anew.

Slowly, his grip on reality slipped. He stopped eating. His concerned servants tried cajoling him into eating, bringing him his favourite foods. He saw the dejection in their slumped shoulders as they came to collect the foodtrays, plates once again untouched, food long having gone cold. The only ones who fed well in his chambers were the flies that swarmed over his untouched food.

He couldn't find it himself to _care_.

After a while, he stopped shaving as well. This turned the servants concern into full blown panic. Master Frollo was always a meticulously groomed man and to see him slide down like that was disconcerting to witness. The palace was in an uproar, and for once, nobody had the right answer.

Of course, it took very little time before the titters of the concerned servants reached Esmeralda's unbelieving ears.

So, Frollo existed for a while, stuck in a Hell of his own making. Sleep eluded him mostly and when it did, his dreams were filled with..._them_. His trembling worsened, brought on by lack of sleep. He needed _sleep_. He needed peace. He needed absolution. He needed..._her._

And thus it was, exactly twenty-one days after Esmeralda had opened his eyes as to who he really was, that Judge Claude Frollo, finally _snapped_.

* * *

><p>She<em> knew<em> he was there at her door moments before she heard the tentative rap of knuckles on the old wood. Her feet swung out the bed, landing on flagstones before her mind caught up with her. She had just fallen into an uneasy slumber, courtesy of the heat that wouldn't let up. This evening was even worse than other nights. She had the foresight to have her bed moved to the open windows a few days ago, to make the most of the slightly cooler night breeze. The fluttering curtains caressed her bare legs on these long, stifling nights. For the past few days, the promise of a fat thunderstorm had lingered over the city, casting the evenings in dark, unusual shadows. The heavens above tonight were pregnant with the promise of rain. Every now and then, flashes lit up the night sky.

All in all, fitting weather for what was about to unfold, she thought as she made her way to the door, hand reaching for the handle.

A curious dichotomy of a man was stood in the hallway, gazing at her with clouded, uncertain eyes. He stooped slightly, his very countenance and stance betraying his inner turmoil.

"There are things," he whispered softly, " I have done..." He trembled and steadied himself on the wall. He looked _awful . _His silver hair was dishevelled and he sported rough dark whiskers on his thin face. The fine lines on his face had deepened and his skin looked sallow, almost greenish. But the worst were his eyes.

A broken, hurt _boy-man_ looked back at her through silver confused eyes. He looked so scared, so utterly _lost, _that Esmeralda had to stifle a sympathetic gasp. As it was, a strangled noise _did_ make its way past her throat and Frollo flinched harshly, fully expecting to have the door slammed in his face. She saw him tense his muscles, preparing to bolt.

Before he could misinterpret further, she closed her fingers around his bony wrist, tugging him towards him. Frollo moaned at her touch, a sound halfway between pain and bliss and Esmeralda was shocked to find tears welling up in her eyes.

He shuffled into the room, his pale feet as bare as hers, and continued: " There's a _beast, _ and I've let it run.."

Was he rambling? No, the eyes staring back at her were haunting, but _lucid_.

"Fro-...Cl- Claude?"

He took note of the bed near the open windows and made his way over there, gingerly sitting down at the foot end.

"I-I know I'm not forgiven," he croaked in reply, "but I need a place to sleep. I can't..._can't sleep_. I need...I need to sleep!" He looked up at her beseechingly. "Help me sleep, _please!"_

_What was she to do? _

This...man... in her _bed_. This trembling fractured soul, hurting, reaching out for help. Once so proud, now come undone by the simple power of truth. He was _dying_ inside, and she saw how _afraid_ he was underneath. In that moment, her heart broke for him, partially in sympathetic pain, partly in some darker unnamed emotion that she dared not name. He had unraveled under her hands and she wanted to put him back together again, more than anything at that moment.

What else could she do?

Before she knew it, she reached out for him, placing her hands on his shoulders and with a soft shove pushed him back wards on her bed. He landed on his back with a surprised _oof._ He blinked at her owlishly, hands coming up to touch hers, which were still placed on his shoulders.

Giving his questioning hands a brief squeeze, she reached for the fastenings on his chemise, making quick work of them. With a shrug of his shoulders, he rolled out of his shirt, sighing deeply and raggedly, almost melting boneless into her mattress and pillows.

* * *

><p><em>Oh,<em> he had lost weight which he could ill afford to lose. As she revealed his pale, perspiring skin, she could see his heaving ribs sticking out. Esmeralda's throat clenched at what she saw.

Frollo rolled on his side, drawing his knees up to his chest. Despite the stifling heat, he was shivering.

"Will you lie with me, please?" came his muffled voice from her pillows. "Just lie beside me, _please _?"

It was extremely unnerving to hear this powerful man begging like he did.

If there was once satisfaction in seeing him reduced to the state he was in, it was by now long gone, only to be replaced by a strong desire to make it all better for him. So, Esmeralda acquiesced, dropping her dressing gown on the ground, where it drifted and landed on top of Frollo's wrinkled shirt.

Dressed only in her thin night shift and trying to disturb him as little as possible, she crawled over him, landing on his other side, closest to the open windows. There she lay down, turning her head to look at him once more. Their eyes met. His eyes crinkled at her in greeting, and she blinked back at him stupidly, words stuck in her throat. Frollo gave her a sad smile and lifted his hand to touch one of her curls.

"You were right," he whispered across the pillow. "_You were right and I was blind_. " Something akin to a sob rose from his throat and the turned his face away from her, burying his face in the pillow.

If Esmeralda's heart had cracked before, this was the moment when it truly broke and she reached out for him almost desperately, hands first landing on his naked shoulders, and when he didn't respond at all to that, closer, fully encircling him, one hand on his back and one, finally, in his hair, where her fingers rested at the base of his skull, committing the feel of texture and silkiness of his hair to her memory. She played with the soft shorn hairs at the base of his neck , at last satisfying her long standing curiosity. They were soft and tickled her fingers. Soft and feathery and so at odds with the man himself.

Frollo released a low keening sound at her ministrations, a hard shiver running through his entire body. He lifted his head and locked gazes with her again, his eyes suspiciously red.

"I'm afraid," he confessed to her, and something wild flashed in his eyes. "_I'm so afraid, Esmeralda..." _He hiccuped and moved a little closer to her, his body seeking hers out, despite the heat.  
>"I am so afraid of going to Hell," he moaned in agony, " but it's where I deserve to be!"<p>

Frollo blinked hard. Twice. Despite his efforts, a hot, wet tear rolled from the corner of his eye where it was quickly absorbed by the pillow, leaving a little damp stain.

"What do I do, Esmeralda?" His voice cracked and he sounded like a very scared young boy. "What do I do?" He repeated.

"_Help me, Esmeralda!"_ He croaked finally, burying his face in her shoulder and hair.

She gathered him as close as he could stand and ran her fingers once more through his damp hair. There he rested, sighing raggedly once more. She just rocked him softly, completely at a loss for words.

Slowly his tense body relaxed in her arms. His ragged breathing grew deeper and steadier until he fell limp in her embrace. _Asleep_.

Esmeralda on her part struggled for a long time with the hot lump of coal stuck in the back of her throat. Losing the battle finally, she gave into her own pain and silently wept for her broken beast of a man. Then she too stilled, drawn into the forgiving arms of Morpheus.

* * *

><p>The only witness to the miracle that laid there beneath, in that bed, were the clouds above. At that moment, they decided to hold back a little longer. They knew they could wait. First they would allow the two people below <em>their <em>moment of release.

And so the dark green clouds rolled on, calmly gaining momentum and power. Patiently they awaited their cue.


End file.
